


Home Fires

by battle_cat



Series: Together [38]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Forehead Touching, Introspection, Porn with Feelings, Reunion Sex, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-08
Updated: 2016-10-08
Packaged: 2018-08-20 05:10:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8237266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/battle_cat/pseuds/battle_cat
Summary: Max finds himself the one waiting around at the Citadel while Furiosa is out on a dangerous mission.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was YoukaiYume's story prompt to begin with, and it also incorporates her latest [smutty art](http://youkaiyume.tumblr.com/post/151538193488/warning-nsfw-for-this-weeks-smut-prompt-for).

“She’s not here.”

Toast is the one who greets him as he steps out of the car, beating dust from his scarf and jacket and trying not to flinch too badly in the cacophony of the garage. It’s always overwhelming after the solitude of the wastes, so many voices and bodies and loud noises.

(It’s only when he feels the sudden lurch, like reaching for a missing handhold, that he realizes that he’s used to latching on to Furiosa’s presence to ground him in those first few seconds while he remembers how to be around other humans.)

“Max?” He jolts at Toast’s voice, even though his brain is already registering _familiar_ and _alive._ “She’s on a trade run to Bartertown. Convoy’s expected back this afternoon.” Her gaze flicks to him briefly, then away, and he makes himself grunt in acknowledgement.

“You could get washed up while you’re waiting for her,” she suggests, and it’s something to do, so he hefts his pack out of the car and heads for the baths.

 

By the time he’s scrubbed himself clean of wasteland grit, shaved and trimmed his jagged nails, he’s no longer jumping out of his skin at every noise in the corridor.

Without Furiosa around he feels strangely adrift in the Citadel. He ventures into her room but it seems odd and cold without her, so tidy that setting his dusty pack down on the floor feels like trespassing. The thought of braving the noisy, crowded garage or the mess hall makes his skin crawl, and so he wanders up into the highest garden and finds a quiet ledge where he can keep an eye on the horizon in the direction of Bartertown.

Dag drifts over at one point, her infant daughter asleep against her chest, and says, “Hello, Max,” seeming thoroughly unsurprised to see him there. She wanders off without another word, but some time later Cheedo appears at his shoulder with a large handful of bean cakes and a full canteen.

It’s only when Capable stops by mid-afternoon that he realizes something is wrong. Her smile is too tight in a way she’s not good at hiding, her fingers nervous on the spyglass as she scans the horizon.

“When were they due back?” he finds himself asking, the gravelly rattle of his voice startling both of them.

She bites her lip before she says, “Yesterday.” Then quickly, “Just yesterday. Trade might’ve taken longer than they expected. Or they had to detour. Or someone blew a gasket and they’re going slow.” The tight smile again. “A day’s nothing, right? She’s fine,” she says, as if a cold charge of worry hasn’t just slipped into the air around them.

“You could come down to the Mouth. We have a watch going there,” she says, but Max shakes his head, and after one last glance at his hunched shoulders, she goes inside.

Bartertown is two days’ hard drive from the Citadel if you fang it, three if you need to be stealthy or cautious with your fuel. That ambiguity combined with the constant flux of trading conditions means that rationally speaking, there is nothing to worry about yet.

But here is fear anyway like a lump of bad jerky in his gut, and goddammit, wasn’t this the exact thing he’d sworn to stay away from? The bone-grinding terror of _caring,_ because it always ends in blood and horror; there is no other way. Better to go, run, leave, before people started thinking you were reliable.

He’d gotten damn good at it too, before she’d somehow seeped under his skin.

There was a time when he’d thought the grim focus that solo survival demanded would be what scoured his ghosts away. But it hadn’t worked; they’d only grown louder on the howl of the desert wind and the roar of the engine, and he’d gotten lost, gotten caught, gotten stuck here. He’d thought he’d wrenched himself free when he’d left her bloody and triumphant on the lift, but the further he got from the Citadel the more she’d crept into his thoughts, and of all the goddamn things in this broken world the one that had most reliably stilled the voices in his head was sleeping by her side.

Perhaps it’s because she doesn’t need him. She is a survivor, like he is, and there is nothing he can do to protect her that she cannot already do for herself, nothing he can tell her about the choices to be made and the weight of living with them that she doesn’t already know.

The problem is that _he_ is starting to need _her,_ and it claws at him.

In the beginning he’d been able to tell himself it was just comfort. A warm body against his own, a simple pleasure he’d forgotten how to miss. Remembering aches, because now that he’s unforgotten the dumb animal satisfaction of touch and sex, he finds himself wanting it all the time, wanting to stay curled around her and against her and inside her _all the time,_ and the sudden surge of base need is disconcerting. Hundreds of days had gone by in which he would have sworn grief and bitter survival had killed any spark of lust he had left in him, but she is a thousand-year rain, bringing to the surface all kinds of things he’d thought were dead.

It would have been manageable, he thinks, if it were only sex, just pheromones and a bit of shared solace in a harsh world. But he’s long past the point of being able to fool himself about that.

The sun dips lower in the sky as he stares at the horizon, waiting for a cloud of dust and trying to ignore the grinding knot of fear in his gut.

 

At some point he loses the ability to sit still and starts pacing, hunched under his jacket as the shadows lengthen. By the time the sun touches the horizon he’s half a heartbeat away from saying fuck it and riding out to look for them himself, but then there’s a shout from somewhere down below and the last rays of the sun illuminate a faint but clearly moving sketch of dust on the horizon.

He stays just long enough to confirm that it’s approaching—it is, and fast—then he’s scrambling down stone steps, ignoring the twang in his knee with every downward landing, hurrying through corridors he knows well enough now to navigate without hesitation, to the door in the rock and the narrow gangway that leads to the War Tower.

 

As soon as the lift clangs into place it’s clear the new rig has combat damage: the driver’s side dented and scraped, panels blackened with fire damage, a tire running on a makeshift patch that looks ready to give way any minute.

Furiosa is giving orders before she’s even out of the driver’s seat, leaning out the window to snap instructions to the crew members lowering a War Boy with a dark-stained bandage around his thigh out of the back of the cab. When she swings out of the door to stand on the runner board he can see dried blood crusted up and down her arm.

She is incandescent with battle-fury, eyes bright and hard, face smeared with sweat and soot, and there’s a split second when her gaze skims past him without seeing, and then she registers his form in the shadows of the garage and smiles, a real smile, and it’s dazzling as the noonday sun off burnished chrome.

He’s crossing the garage and she jumps down from the runner board and meets him halfway, a conk of her forehead against his made sloppy by eagerness and exhaustion, and then she’s pulling him into a bruising hug, flesh and metal fingers digging into the muscles of his back through his jacket. He can still feel combat humming beneath her skin, feel the sweat that soaked through the back of her shirt and the twitchy buzz of adrenaline in her muscles. He manages to shift his gaze enough to check the wound on her upper arm—it’s a bullet graze, but shallow, although it oozes a little blood when she fists her flesh hand into the collar of his jacket.

“Max is here,” Toast says unnecessarily from behind Furiosa’s shoulder.

 

She leaves a War Boy recounting the glorious tale of the raider attack they foiled, brushes off Janey’s attempts at medical care, and heads for her room with an unspoken, unmistakable command for Max to follow.

Her room feels entirely different with her inside it, a cool, quiet refuge. She sits on the bench and lets him sponge the clotted blood off her arm with a damp cloth and swab the wound with a bit of disinfectant from the stash of medical supplies she keeps. 

He only realizes his hands are shaking when he fumbles with the bandages.

“Max,” she says softly. He makes his numb fingers finish tying off the dressing. She shifts on the bench, turning around to face him, a knee bumping awkwardly against his. Her flesh fingers slide under his chin, pulling his face up to hers, as she leans forward to press their foreheads together.

“You’re shaking,” she breathes, and he is. Her hand slides back to stroke through his hair.

He’s grown used to the Vuvalini way of greeting, the gesture that can mean either hello or goodbye—used to it enough not to flinch, anyway. But the intimacy of the contact can still leave him reeling: face against face, not kissing but nearly as close, her breath feathering across his skin and her strong fingers twined into his hair, her aliveness inescapable.

“I’m okay, Max,” she says, and he gives a tiny nod against her forehead. Because he knows; it’s a flesh wound that he would barely give a second glance to. But it’s not the wound on her arm that's making him shake.

“It’s okay,” she says again, her voice low and steady, the way it was when she first asked him his name, her hand warm on the back of his skull, keeping them together. “I’m here,” she says. And she is; she is the most solid thing in the room, the most solid thing in the universe sometimes.

She smells like battle, cordite and ash and the sharp tang of adrenaline-tinged sweat.

His pulse is hammering: he can feel it in his chest, his forehead, the tips of his fingers twitching uselessly at his side. He doesn’t know where to put his hands so after a moment he puts one against the back of her head, feels her tiny exhale at the contact. The other one drifts to her knee, and she lets out a soft hum as he strokes absently over the leather of her trousers.

“I,” she says, “am very full of adrenaline.” Out of the corner of his peripheral vision he sees her lips twitch. “Want to help me relax?”

It isn’t really a question. He can already feel his body responding to her closeness, and isn’t this how it always is? As soon as he is actually in her presence the intensity of wanting her silences everything else.

He tilts his head and her lips are right there to meet his, soft and inviting, her open mouth and tongue seeking out his. It’s an awkward position, both of them straddling the bench, and after a moment she slides away from him to stand up, a tilt of her head urging him to follow.

She wraps her arms around him and lets him back her against the wall, and this is a much better position to be kissing in, pressed body to body with his hands roaming everywhere over her curves, feeling her breath go rough against his mouth. She runs a hand up under the collar of his jacket and he spares half a breath to shrug the leather off before pressing back against her.

She puts his hand on the buckles of her prosthetic, giving him permission. It’s rare that she lets anyone else touch it, but when his gaze flicks up to her face she gives him a tiny nod. He’s clumsier with it than her precise, automatic movements, but careful, and she is patient, waiting for him to slide the pauldron off her shoulder and lay the arm down gingerly on the workbench.

When he reaches behind her to unlace the leather body armor around her midriff she steps close into his space. Her cheek presses against his, her hand resting on his shoulder, a simple gesture of trust that makes his heart stutter. She still sleeps with a barred door and five guns in her room and yet can let herself be close to him so easily.

In between heated kisses he peels off her shirt. She is already starting to bruise, the way you do from getting thrown around in a road battle, even if you have the heavier car. He traces the bluish smear along her ribs where she must’ve banged against the doorframe while leaning out to shoot, and then ducks his head down to brush a soft kiss there. Her nipples are already tight and hard; she moans when he sucks one into his mouth.

He kneels to tug off her boots and leathers, taking time to nip down her hip and stomach, run his hands over the fine hairs on her thighs and the smooth curve of her ass. He could stay here and eat her out, spread open against the wall until she’s shaking, but tonight he wants to be pressed skin to skin to her from head to toe.

“Why are you still wearing clothes?” she mutters when he gets to his feet, and together they make short work of his remaining layers until they’re both completely naked.

He can’t get enough of her skin: his mouth on hers, his cock pressed between their sweaty hips, his hands wanting to be everywhere at once. He puts a hand between her legs and finds her slick and eager; she gasps when he slides two fingers easily inside her, whimpers when his thumb finds her clit and begins stroking. “Unnh, _Max,_ ” she groans as he curls and rocks his fingers inside her, and he’s suddenly stupidly glad that he told her his name.

He makes her come like that, her half-arm wrapped tight around the back of his neck and her teeth digging into his shoulder when she climaxes. She’s barely stopped twitching around his hand when she gasps, “On the bed.”

They stumble in that general direction and land messily with her on top. As soon as she gets her legs under her she’s sliding down on his cock, working him all the way into her and _grinding,_ her stomach muscles rippling as her hips rock.

They’re both moaning and panting and dizzy with pleasure, and she has her eyes squeezed shut but he can’t keep himself from looking at her, flushed and sweaty and uninhibited as she chases her own pleasure. Her moans change pitch when he matches her rhythm to rock his hips up against her, and she tips forward, her forehead resting against his again as she grinds down hard and fast and feral. When he works a hand between them it only takes a few strokes at her clit to have her coming again, and the clench of her pussy and the _sound_ she makes are enough to send him over the edge too.

She doesn’t move. Her chest is heaving, her eyes still closed and forehead still slick with sweat against his own. He strokes gentle touches down her spine, up her thigh and over the curve of her ass until they both can breathe normally again.

She opens her eyes and gives him a fond, loopy smile. Then she utters a low moan of satisfaction and flops down bonelessly on top of him.

 

Later, after they’ve washed each other clean and crawled into night clothes, when she’s snuggled up against him and almost asleep, he thinks about the fierce way she hugged him in the garage, thinks about the way he paced the garden heights and wonders if she’s done the same for him.

There are times when the urge to run feels like a force completely beyond his control, and she has never demanded he stay when terror and guilt and instinct are screaming at him to go. But he is not unaware of the lesson the universe had just shoved at him by having their positions reversed.

“Furi?”

She hums, a little fond noise at hearing the pet name.

“Was worried,” he ventures. “Today. Waiting for you to come back. Got scared you’d—” He licks his dry lips.

“‘M sorry,” she mutters sleepily.

“D’you…d’you worry, when I go?”

He can feel the very slightest shift in her body, hear her take a breath before answering. “Yes. I worry.”

“Can’t…” He swallows. “Always stop myself from going.”

“I know.”

“But…I try.”

“I know you do.” She snuggles closer to him and wraps an arm around his ribs. Her head fits perfectly in the hollow below his jaw.

Try harder, he tells himself. Next time he will try harder.


End file.
